Romantasy: dragons, riders and twisted lovers

FANTASY

Romantasy: dragons, riders and twisted lovers

KERNEELS BREYTENBACH succumbed to fantasy and suspended disbelief.

Image: ANGELA TUCK

ONE probably shouldn't distance oneself from certain types of books. Yet I managed it with great success with science fiction. It's hard enough for me to understand the real world and navigate the things that leave scars. Why pick up a book that paints a grim futuristic picture, or expend a tremendous amount of intent concentration on understanding a fantasy world?

But I should have known that at some point I was going to change my mind. I've fallen hard for fantasy stories (Harry Potter) before and knew it would only take a spark to ignite the whole thing.

The book industry has been buzzing lately because sales overseas have shown an enormous boom in recent years, especially in the genre called romantasy by the Yanks. I can't ignore it any longer, which is why this week I started reading books by two of the most successful romantasy authors — Rebecca Yarros and Sarah J Maas — and specifically the two titles that are among the top 10 sellers internationally. Yarros's Fourth Wing and Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses. (I use the Publishers Weekly list.)

Fourth Wing was published last year, and the sequel, Iron Flame, earlier this year. I'm still recovering from Fourth Wing's 646 pages. Because it is the first part of Yarros's Empyrean series, set in the kingdom of Navarre, one must start reading here in order to understand Navarre with his four quadrants for riders (of dragons), writers, healers and infantry.

The Empyrean series revolves around 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail, who is slim, small and destined for the writers' quadrant. But her mother, General Lilith Sorrengail of the equestrian quadrant, insists that she become a rider. Now, very few riders survive. Violet experiences an onslaught on her life just about every day, overcoming them because she knows a few tricks and is genetically sound. And before you can scream “Harry Potter", Violet triumphs.

There is love, too: Violet is torn between her friend Dain Aetos and Xaden, an old enemy of the Sorrengail family. Triangles tend to lead to a double helix.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the book immensely. A lot happens, and because losing isn't part of Violet's vocabulary, the reader stays on a high throughout. Yarros is JK Rowling lite, and she has yet to learn quite a bit about plotting and joining loose threads. But she's already sold more than 1.3 million copies of her romantasy novels, so one can assume she's not overly concerned with plotting. A twentysomething girl who tames dragons and can fall head over heels in love is not to be scorned.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros was published by Little, Brown and costs R290 at Exclusive Books.


Sarah J Maas has produced four series since 2014: The Assassin's Blade, Throne of Glass, A Court of Thorns and Roses and Crescent City. Her writing is as voluminous as Yarros's (A Court of Thorns and Roses has 432 pages) but she practises a different kind of magic.

A Court of Thorns and Roses (the first novel gives the series its name) is an attempt to retell three well-known stories: Beauty and the Beast, East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Tam Lin. The eponymous first novel in the series is the one that retells Beauty and the Beast. In this case, Feyre is the Beauty, and after killing a wolf that is actually a fairy, she is taken to the land of the fairy to do penance.

I have to admit that sometimes I couldn't believe I'd fallen under the spell of Beauty and the Beast all over again — but this time there's a sex scene that's more sensational than anything you'll come across in a Fifty Shades book. It's such scenes that shocked and outraged a bunch of Americans and caused some of Maas's books to fail to find their way into school libraries.

I assume Maas isn't overly concerned about it. This book is aimed at people 14 years and older but is mainly read by adults. All the fuss is good for sales — more than 38 million copies of Maas's books have been sold internationally and they've been translated into 38 languages. Neat symmetry.

Maas's onslaught is more direct, less formal than Yarros's. Because she works with the kind of fantasy world one has to accept with childlike innocence, it's easier and faster to read. I hate conditional recommendations, but Maas writes for holiday purposes, for long hours in aeroplanes, for people who still understand the charm of the fairy world.

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas is published by Bloomsbury  and costs R285 at Exclusive Books.


At the other end of the romantasy spectrum is Ana Huang's Twisted series. The first title, Twisted Love, was published in 2021 and I'm having trouble reading it. Maybe Yarros and Maas spoiled me, but if you want to read Huang's series you need to know that you're going to be dealing with bad, devilish people.

Twisted Love aims to make you understand that a man whose behaviour is mostly inhuman and seriously off also has a bit of good in him when he is forced to look after the fragile (yet lustful) young sister of his best friend. Naturally, the two fall for each other, and the moment they find each other in spirit and flesh, out pop a bunch of secrets and things that should have remained unknown.

It's not a unique story, and it boggles my mind that Huang has found 400,000 buyers for this book. Why it's described as romantasy, I can't fathom either. The only incontestable fact is that the male main character, Alex Volkov, does not back down for the free-spirited Ava Chin. He backs and backs and then she says thank you very much, do it again.

Huang is the queen of love stories right now. She has four series that I know of: Twisted, Kings of Sin, If Love and Gods of the Game. Bodice rippers for people wearing dirty T-shirts. The fantasy part probably refers to what's going on in the reader's head.

You'll want to read Yarros's and Maas's series in order of appearance.  Huang's marketers say sequencing doesn't matter. Thank goodness. Once is plenty, as my grandfather used to say.

Twisted Love by Ana Huang was published by Little, Brown and costs R290 at Exclusive Books.

♦ VWB ♦


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